Good Morning, Midnight: Jean Rhys (Penguin Modern Classics)

Product Information

See Bill Brown, A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 54, 55. God, it’s funny, being a woman! And the other one – the one behind the bar – is she going to giggle or to say something about me in a voice loud enough for me to hear? That’s the way she’s feeling. Sasha comes to Paris on holiday to reminisce about her traumatic youth, which was full of loss and pain. We don’t have the whole picture, only some fragments of her life, but it adds up nicely. She is spending all her time thinking about the past because there’s no future before her, she’s buried underneath her devastating experiences.

You know what feeling always does me in? Loneliness. When I start feeling lonely it’s hard for me to snap out of it. I tend to wallow in it for awhile; put For Emma, Forever Ago on the stereo (who’s lonelier than a broken hearted guy recording an album by himself in a cabin in Wisconsin in the middle of winter?), open a bottle of Pinot, snuggle up to my cat and tell him all of my troubles. Maybe put on a Kieslowski film. Maybe ‘The Double Life of Veronique.’What is it one looks for in others when one is that lonely? How differently and acutely observant and intuitive does that make a person? And how distrustful! She knows there is something in her that makes them see through her. Is it the sadness, the compliance, the vulnerability? It makes them so hateful, so pitiless. But there is no self-pity in Sasha Jensen, but a terrible ache, a yearning inside. It is something that can never be filled for its moment of birth is already over.

Sasha also has a fairly positive association with two Russian men and with an artist friend of theirs, a Jewish man whom she and one of the friends visit. Since she identifies with the artist and feels some relief and return of feeling in the presence of his work, she is moved to buy one of his paintings, as seems to be expected (but certainly not demanded) of her. In discussion of the book, some readers said they did not understand why she bought the painting, but I strongly identified with this action - I have been well conditioned by late consumer capitalism to express my thoughts and feelings, including emotional gratitude, by buying things. What happens to a woman when her self-esteem becomes entirely dependent on mirrors and men. Everything about Sasha, our narrator, has seen better days, including her fur coat which she wears as a kind of memory mantra of better days. There's a febrile pressing authenticity about the way Rhys writes of this squalid repetitive purgatorial world. You can feel the squalor and fatality of Sasha's downward spiral on your skin. Sasha herself seems to have little psychological insight - betokened by the constant tears she sheds without quite knowing where they come from. As a reader you find yourself doubling up as psychoanalyst. There's a fabulous touch at the end when Rhys inverts and creates a horror show of Molly Bloom's triumphant yes to life at the end of her monologue in Ulysses.it feels like there’s no bottom. She is lonely, isolated, hopeless, self destructive and has zero will to live. She understands everything about herself and she’s pitiless. Everything hurts her, and when you read it, it hurts you too.

I see you didn’t like what happened in court today. I have got you where I want you now and I’ll get you lower still.” Jean said, according to Jean, “If you think I’m going to pay this fine, you have made a mistake. I would sooner go to prison for life.“ It is not just the loneliness, it’s the inability to pull oneself out of it, of making nothing out of her youth, of pouring out her existence into the vapidness of the Parisian cafes, seedy hotel rooms. Of being the failed participant of her own life. Her life which is splattered on those forgetful streets, and bars where everyone is cruel, everyone disapproves. She is the witness of her dissolution. And how hard she tries to sink in her invisibility, the muteness of her self. But think how hard I try and how seldom I dare. Think and have a bit of pity. That is if you ever think you apes which I doubt. Money. Every care in the world centers on money, swirls around money like a whirlpool. She borrows money from friends, some give her money out of exasperation or kindness or … whatever. What to say about the protagonist? She has a name, seldom mentioned, since the narrative is in the first person - but I won't bother looking it up - let's just call her "Jean" - will that do?

Select a format:

Sasha Jansen, a middle-aged English woman, has returned to Paris after a long absence. Only able to make the trip because of some money lent to her by a friend, she is financially unstable and haunted by her past, which includes an unhappy marriage and her child's death. She has difficulty taking care of herself; drinking heavily, taking sleeping pills and obsessing over her appearance, she is adrift in the city that she feels connected to despite the great pain it has brought her. I cry for a long time - for myself, for the old woman with the bald head, for all the sadness of this damned world, for all the fools and all the defeated ... Paris, the city of light, goes out modestly, giving way to shabby hotel rooms and superficial descriptions of dead, empty streets where soulless people roam without direction. In the middle of the night you wake up. You start to cry. What’s happening to me? Oh, my life, oh, my youth…

Apparantly at the time of publication, the critics praised the writing of this book, but said that it was unenjoyable due to its depressing subject matter. However, I think that it was an incredibly brave text to release at the time (1939) for it painted a woman's sexuality in a very frank way, and didn't shy away from difficult subjects. We see her drinking alone in bars, going out with different men (including a gigolo), and generally come to terms with her existence as a solitary woman, and I appreciated that vision created by Rhys. It seems appropriate to end with the poem for which this novel is named. It’s worth reading it alongside the novel: Reading it feels pretty claustrophobic. There’s no escape, because you cannot escape your own head where all hell breaks loose. You can only hide for some time in a hotel room. She has a remarkable ability to read what people are thinking into their looks. She can go on for a few sentences about what a waiter thinks of her before a word is spoken. Unfortunately what she thinks they are thinking is always disparaging or reproachful of her. Her mental attitude is such that she is doomed from the start in just about any human interaction. This is my 3rd book within a couple of months - by Jean Rhys - so one can assume correct that I think Rhys was a phenomenal writer.The Publisher Says: In 1930s Paris, where one cheap hotel room is very like another, a young woman is teaching herself indifference. She has escaped personal tragedy and has come to France to find courage and seek independence. She tells herself to expect nothing, especially not kindness, least of all from men. Tomorrow, she resolves, she will dye her hair blonde.